The Philosopher as Hero

Costica Bradatan:

Central to philosophy as a way of life is the practice of self-examination. The virtues of self-examination can hardly be over-estimated. Yet there can be something dark, unsettling, even dangerous about performing it. Self-examination can sometimes be a curse and the self-examiner a doomed person. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the examined life can be unlivable. Philosophers gladly proclaim "know thyself", but usually forget to mention the high price that comes with such knowledge: self-doubt, disorientation, groundlessness. Indeed, this is no comfortable learning but knowledge of one's limits and limitations: quite often what you face is not some beautiful vista, but your own abyss. To the extent that any serious quest for wisdom starts in self-examination, the one who embarks on it frequently navigates through a world of anguish, inner conflicts, even provocation to disaster.

Life-threatening as the journey may be, however, the final destination makes it worth taking. From a letter that Nietzsche sent to his doctor, Osso Eiser, in January 1880, we get a glimpse of both the journey's difficulties and the unique joy that overcoming them causes in the self-examiner:

My existence is an awful burden – I would have dispensed with it long ago, were it not for the most illuminating tests and experiments I have been conducting in matters of mind and morality even in my state of suffering and almost absolute renunciation – the pleasure I take in my thirst for knowledge brings me to heights from which I triumph over all torment and despondency.

No matter how unbearable life can be, Nietzsche suggests, its self-examination comes with a precious reward: the renewed dignity of the act of living. Life examined is thus life transformed. Your life changes in the very process of looking at it; if it doesn't, it only means you are not examining it properly. Philosophy, then, is indeed performative; it is not just something you talk about, it is above all something you do.

– Dying for Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers. 2015. pp. 29-30

For myself, I would make no such grand claims. I do find, though, that my unexamined state is subject to wild and strange swings of emotion that reflection reveals to be pointless and useless. Thinking about my life, reflecting on my unearned advantages and the long-term goals I have set for myself, the things that matter to me, the commitments I have made, the needs of those who depend on me; all of this brings be back to more solid ground.